Interactive television (TV), social networking, and like services have given rise to traditional video consumers acting as social networking users. For instance, social networking users may share comments, ratings, bookmarks, tags, scene tags, frame tags, highlights, and many other forms of user-generated metadata with other viewers of the same primary video content, irrespective of the source from which the video program containing the primary video content is obtained. Here, the term “primary video content” does not include extraneous content of the video program that may have been spliced into the video stream, such as advertisements and the like. In contrast, the term “video program” refers to all content including the primary video content and the extraneous content.
Some user-generated information (i.e., comments, ratings, bookmarks, tags, etc.) may be relevant to the program content in its entirely, and thus, may not necessarily be associated with any given frame, scene, point in time, or point of interest of the primary video content. However, other types of user-generated metadata may have temporal relevance to a particular frame, scene, point in time, or point of interest of the primary video content. For instance, a content-specific comment made about a particular scene or a bookmark associated with a specific point in the primary video content may have temporal relevance with the content being viewed.
In some instances, user-generated metadata, such as, comments, ratings, bookmarks, tags and the like can be strictly associated and directly stored with the content in a one-to-one relationship. In this case, all such temporal tags are associated with timestamps utilizing the start of the program as a reference time. However, there are also instances and systems in which user-generated tags are not stored directly with the content. Rather, the video programs containing the primary video content may be obtained from various different sources, and the user-generated metadata, which is separately processed and stored, is added onto the content during playback.
Thus, user-generated tags or the like may be shared in the context of assets (i.e., primary video content) that are known to be the same content, but not necessarily provided from the same source in an identical manner. By way of example, a user may associate some tags with a video program when consumed from a first source which did not have any advertisements; however, when the same primary video content is later made available through a different source, for instance, this time with advertisements or other interspersed content, the program start and finish times may no longer provide a valid reference mechanism for use in proper temporal correlation of a user-generated tag with a specific frame, scene, point in time, or point of interest of the primary video content.
The above problem can exist at the time of tag creation and at a later time during tag display because there is no way of knowing where the tag should be placed within a video program or where it should be displayed without any reference point within the video program. Thus, unless the same asset is being referenced and the program start/finish times and media flow are identical, the program start or finish time cannot be used as a reference point from which to place the tag so that it is properly associated with a particular frame or scene of the primary video content.
In addition to the above described reason for misalignment of user-generated metadata relative to a point of interest within primary video content (i.e., the addition or change of advertisements or other interspersed content), another cause of temporal misalignment may be that the primary video content has been highly edited with scenes or parts thereof removed and/or added. Thus, one version of a program may have no temporal resemblance to the original program. In addition, DVR recordings of the same program may have portions edited and/or removed, and a program being recorded or a service that has been acquired may be from a point in time other than the original starting point (i.e., delayed recording or tune time). Highlight reels will also have no temporal resemblance to the original full-length primary video content.
Accordingly, a solution is needed to the above described temporal misalignment problem of user-generated tags or metadata with primary video content, particularly with respect to video programs that are provided from disparate sources and that may not be identical to the version which was viewed when user-generated metadata or tags were initially created.